Now how about using iron tires on iron road? And using public transport?
Fuck yeah, public transit - Right in my veins, lets go.
But for right now, there is ZERO public transit infrastructure where I live, which is only about 20-30 minutes to a medium-sized city’s downtown. And when I say ZERO, I mean ZERO. We don’t even have busses here. No trains. NOTHING. We don’t even have sidewalks on most roads - if you want to walk, you’re literally walking in the road. I used to ride a bike to work a long time ago - I can’t even count the number of times I’ve had shit thrown at me by shitbag rednecks as they zoomed past in their lifted pickup trucks.
The local governments’ answer to all this is “If you don’t have a car, fuck you.” Cars are literally the only option. If you don’t have a car or a driver’s license, you better find somebody who does and give them gas money, or consign yourself to paying for Uber/Lyft anytime you want to go anywhere. It’s straight-up dangerous to travel any other way around here.
Although I agree that using cars on pointless journeys is a waste and not good for the planet, but using public transport isn’t always an option.
If I’m travelling 6 miles in to town then I’m taking the tram, but it really isn’t feasible when travelling 40 miles to work and back 3 times a week. Sure there are trains, but I would have to get up an hour earlier, set off an hour earlier, wait 50 minutes for the train home, and get home two hours later. As I would also have to take the tram 40 minutes to the train station and walk 20 mins before that.
I have a car that I use for work. Outside of that I’m walking or taking public transport.
wait 50 minutes for the train home
Same was in Moscow until Moscow Central Ring was opened and people said “wait, so trains can arrive at 2 minutes interval? Why suburban trains doesn’t do same?”. And that is how D1-D4 were born with 5m peak hours interval instead of few hours of lunch break.
If I’m travelling 6 miles in to town then I’m taking the tram, but it really isn’t feasible when travelling 40 miles to work and back 3 times a week.
“My city is fucking designed wrong so the public transport sucks” isn’t really the rebuttal you think it is. Obviously, the real problem there is your city is fucking designed wrong and the vast majority of people shouldn’t have to be living 40 miles away from work to begin with!
I live in Manchester. Which is an amazing city for public transport. I work in Cheshire which isn’t.
As I said. To take the train. I must walk from my town 20 minutes to the Metrolink, then take that 35-40 minutes into Manchester, then take the train 45 minutes to Cheshire, and then finally walk another 20 minutes to the office. That’s without counting any waiting periods in between. VS 75 minute drive.
We haven’t even factored in it rains 70% of days here. Or even the cost.
You can moan at my boss for not allowing fully WFH. But my point was some people can’t just commute everywhere. Perhaps when I’m more experienced I can find a job closer to home or more remote, but for now this is all I can do.
Edit: I have nothing to rebut to people online. I was merely giving an example. Get off your high horse mate.
a fancy new startup will start calling them decentralised pods for personal transportation.
Promise to be revolutionary.
Preforms worse than all know forms of transport so far